Attachment and spreadout stlldy of 3T3 cells onto PP track etched films

EDUARDO SMOLKO; RUBEN MAZZEI; DANIEL TADEY; DANIEL LOMBARDO

NUCLEAR INSTRUMENTS AND METHODS IN PHYSICS RESEARCH B - BEAM INTERACTIONS WITH MATERIALS AND ATOMS

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Año: 2002 vol. 01 p. 204 - 209

0168-583X

Polymer surface modifications are obtained by the application of radiation treatments and other physico-chemical methods: fission fragment (ft) irradiation and etching. The biocompatibility of the surface is then observed by cell seeding and cell adhesion experiments. Approaches to improvement of the cell adhesion are obtained by different methods: for example, in PS, cell adhesion is improved after ion implantation; in PMMA, after bombarding the polymer. the surface is reconditioned with surfactants and proteins and in PVDF, cell adhesion is assayed on nuclear tracks membranes. In this work, we obtained important cell adhesion improvements in PP films by irradiation with swift heavy ions and subsequent etching of the nuclear tracks. We use BOPP (isotactic -25 !lm thickness). Irrradiations were performed with a Cf-252 californium ff source. The source has a heavy ff and a light one, with 160-200 MeV energy divided among them corresponding to ff energies between 1 and 2 MeV/amu. A chemical etching procedure consisting of a solution of sulphuric acid and chromium three oxide at 85 DC was used. The 3T3 NIH fibroblast cell line was used for the cell adhesion experiment. Here we report for the first time, the results of a series of experiments by varying the ff fluence and the etching time showing that attachment and spreadout of cells are very much improved in this cell line according to the number of pores and the pore size. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.